The following is an excerpt from Sufi Spiritualist Younus AlGohar’s recent talk with community leaders during his visit to Mexico.

Divine Love has different flavours. It is just like frozen yoghurt: there is a mango flavour, a strawberry flavour and others. In the same way, Divine Love has many flavours: a Muslim flavour, Christian flavour, Jew flavour, etc. We are giving people plain Divine Love without a flavour. The difference between our approach and the religious approach is very big.

Our method is to spiritually remove that negative energy from the body.

Religion only focuses on its people. We focus on everybody. We are not here to extend our organisation but we want to share our methodology of love. We represent God, so this method of love is without a flavour – not a Christian, Jew or Muslim flavour – only love.

Because of religion, people are fighting now. In every religion, there were two types of knowledge: the Knowledge of the Exterior and Knowledge of Spirituality. Now, because no religion has the Knowledge of Spirituality left – every religion has forgotten spirituality – they are learning to hate each other. We are just talking about spirituality without religion. We have people from all religions in our organisation.

Now, how do we obtain love? The word ‘love’ has always been grossly misunderstood. It is like asking somebody who is hungry to be happy and smile. Even if that person tries to smile and be happy, he will still look hungry. He will only become genuinely happy when you give him food. In the same way, we ask people to love, but our hearts do not know love.

We talk about love very randomly. We have taken it very easy. Even if we don’t mean it, we say, ‘I love you’. And then, the next minute, if we don’t like them, we say, ‘I hate you’. So we don’t understand love.

In order to understand love, first, we have to remove negative energy from our hearts.

Love is pure. If our heart is impure, we cannot love.

Our main focus is to remove negative energy from us. When negative energy is removed from our bodies, we will bring positive energy. Then, our love for God will flourish. One who genuinely loves God cannot hate anybody. He will love everybody. Sometimes we love somebody and we hate somebody else. Why is that? It is because we have love and hate together inside the heart.

Without hatred, the heart is pure. When there is only love in the heart, you cannot hate anybody.

We have hatred, evil, negative energy in our heart and at the same time, we are also trying to love God. We love somebody and we hate somebody else because we still have the ability to hate. First, our approach is to remove hatred and negativity from the heart. This is a condition from God.

God says, ‘I will only give you love when you remove hatred from the heart.’

For many years in our own capacity, in different regions and countries, we have been trying to overcome this factor of hatred from our life.

A group photo of prominent members of the local community in Mexico City with Sufi Spiritualist Younus AlGohar

How is the Goharian Method Different?

In order to tell you how our method is different, I want to tell you a story. In England, we have painkillers that are opium-based. They mix opium with paracetamol, so when you have extreme pain, they give you relief. But it’s very addictive. I used to have very extreme pain because of migraines. Whenever I had a migraine I would take those tablets because they would help me feel relaxed.

I had been taking these tablets from a long period of time and one day, I discovered that I became addicted. I found out that addiction to these tablets was not good for my health. I promised myself that I was not going to take those tablets anymore. I stopped taking them but I realised that I was feeling very down and I became too weak. The withdrawal effects were tolling on my health. So I took those tablets again and I felt better. I started walking again. It is the mind that tells us that something is dangerous and we shouldn’t take it. My mind understood it, but my body didn’t understand it. Now I was in deep trouble. I knew it was dangerous, but I had to take it.

This is Method 1. Everybody is doing this. They say, ‘This is wrong. Don’t do it. Don’t hate anybody.’ All the religions say that. No religion teaches us to hate anybody.

The Koran says, ‘Don’t kill anybody.’ but Muslims are killing. The Bible says, ‘Don’t kill anybody,’ but [the Christians] are still doing it. One of the Ten Commandments is, ‘You will not kill anybody,’ but people are doing it. So our minds understand that one thing is good and another thing is bad – and we should not do the bad thing – but there is something inside us that forces us to do those things. When something is inside us forcing us to do things, we feel helpless.

Method 1 is weak because Method 1 is about our understanding. We understand we shouldn’t do this, but it happens nevertheless when something inside us is forcing us to do it.

What is Method 2, our method? Let’s go back to the story again. I realised that those tablets were very addictive and if I kept taking them, they were going to destroy my liver and my kidney. I wanted to stop taking them but I had become addicted. So then I consulted with a doctor in Virginia, USA.

He advised me, ‘You should go to a hospital. They will operate you and do minor surgery.’

They implanted something in my stomach. That implant in my stomach stopped the germs of the tablets. The effects of the tablets stopped going into my bloodstream. That implant removed all the effects of the tablets from my blood and I was cured.

In a similar way, we understand something is bad and we want to stop doing it, but the negative energy inside us forces us to do it.

When the negative energy is removed from the body, even if somebody tells you, ‘Let’s go do this bad thing,’ you will not feel like doing it. This is a practical approach. Method 1 is mind over matter in which you think, ‘Okay, I have decided I won’t do it.’ For some people, it works – but some people have more negative energy in them so it doesn’t work for them. Method 2 works for everybody.